Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems

CUDOS brings together a powerful team of Australian and International researchers in optical science and photonics technology, our efforts will lead to significant advancement in the capabilities and knowledge in this crucial field.

Three CUDOS post-deadline papers at the Nonlinear Photonics Conference

A University of Sydney School of Physics team led by Professor Ben Eggleton and Professor Martijn de Sterke, from the Australian Research Council Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), has been selected to present three prestigious post deadline papers at the Nonlinear Photonics international meeting organised by the Optical Society of America.

The team, in collaboration with researchers from CUDOS nodes at the Australian National University, Macquarie University, the University of Technology Sydney, and a visiting colleague from Stanford University in the USA, were selected to present the post deadline papers from a highly competitive field. Their cutting edge research will be presented at the conference to be held in Colorado in the US from 17 to 21 June 2012.

The three papers from CUDOS are amongst only four other post deadline papers from around the world, indicating the strength of research from the team lead by Professor Eggleton and Professor de Sterke.

"The results we're presenting in our papers are really the breakthroughs of the year for us," said Professor Eggleton.

The papers fit into an overarching theme of building a revolutionary photonic integration platform and cover three import breakthroughs in accordance with CUDOS's vision of all-optical signal processing chips that are faster, smaller and smarter. Central to these breakthroughs is the chalcogenide glasses which the CUDOS collaboration have been developing.

"These chalcogenide glasses yield unique optical properties such as massive nonlinearity, photosensitivity and infrared transparency, which can all be optimised for photonic applications," said Professor Eggleton.

One paper will present the team's generation of a new source of quantum light at room temperature, which effectively provides a low noise source of single photons on a photonics chip.

"The 'low noise' - or purity - is the key here, which was enabled by a carefully designed chalcogenide chip," said Professor Eggleton.

"Future quantum technologies rely upon the availability of single packets of light, or photons, to create completely secure communication systems, to make links between quantum computers and to enhance sensing and lithographic capabilities," said CUDOS researcher Dr Alex Clark.

The second paper will present a photonic chip-based tunable microwave filter with a performance that exceeds current electronic capability.

"This breakthrough shows that the CUDOS photonic chip has applications in processing microwave signals and has potential applications in the National Broadband Network and the recently announced Square Kilometer Array," said Professor Eggleton.

The third paper introduces the move towards the highly promising frozen light.

"This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first analysis of nonlinear effects in structures of this type and has the potential to dramatically reduce the switching threshold of optical signal processing devices, thereby saving energy and making devices even smaller," said Professor Martijn de Sterke.

Professor Eggleton concluded, "The CUDOS vision of Faster, Smaller, Smarter is really on track. We can generate faster quantum light sources, smarter microwave photonics filters and we are now aiming for smaller photonics chips with the frozen light and high nonlinearity."

The post deadline papers to be presented at the Nonlinear Photonics meeting are: